CasperLabs grabs $14.5 mln Series A

CasperLabs, an open-source blockchain platform, has raised $14.5 million in Series A funding. Terren Piezer led the round through his personal holding company Acuitas Group Holdings. Other investors include Arrington XRP Capital, Consensus Capital, Axiom Holdings Group, Digital Strategies, MW Partners, Blockchange Ventures, Hashkey Capital and Distributed Global.

PRESS RELEASE

NEW YORK, NY – September 10, 2019 – CasperLabs, the open source blockchain platform powered by renowned researcher Vlad Zamfir’s Correct-by-Construction (CBC) Casper proof-of-stake consensus protocol, today announced it has raised $14.5M in Series A funding led by Terren Piezer, the “Zelig of Wall Street,” through his personal holding company, Acuitas Group Holdings. Other major investors include Arrington XRP Capital, Consensus Capital, Axiom Holdings Group, Digital Strategies, MW Partners, Blockchange Ventures, Hashkey Capital, and Distributed Global. The new investment will be used to accelerate product development and expand hiring of world-class engineers.

Blockchain networks today have yet to achieve widespread adoption for both businesses and consumers because they all compromise on something — speed, efficiency, cost, flexibility, and/or security. Moreover, transaction fees are climbing and already-slow transaction times are increasing as networks become more and more congested. A better platform is needed to remove barriers to mass adoption — a platform that not only solves the “scalability trilemma,” but is also developer-friendly to build and operate dApps.

Enter CasperLabs, the “blockchain for builders” that’s built to scale opportunity for everyone in the blockchain ecosystem and beyond — including developers, entrepreneurs, and consumers.

“We are humbled by the enthusiasm and financial support for our Series A from leading traditional and blockchain investors to build enterprise-grade, decentralized blockchain infrastructure,” said Mrinal Manohar, CEO of ADAPtive Holdings Ltd., parent company of CasperLabs. “We look forward to delivering several interesting technical updates in the coming months and welcome any and all feedback via our open source code repository on Github.”

“I’ve been following and studying the crypto and blockchain space since its earliest days, and I’ve been waiting for a company that can build the strength and decentralized aspects of a public chain with the speed, security, and scalability of a next-gen platform,” said Terren Piezer, who has been a founder or CEO of companies worth over $100 billion and current founder and chairman of Acuitas Group Holdings. “Scalability of a product and company is the leading driver of value creation. Consistently, the most proficiently scalable company becomes the industry leader.”

A Blockchain Platform that Scales Opportunity for Everyone
Coupled with its collaboration with Ethereum researchers to improve Ethereum 2.0 scalability, CasperLabs’ robust, open-source blockchain platform is built to provide comprehensive software, services and support that scale sustainable opportunities for developers, entrepreneurs, investors and consumers. Key benefits include:

CasperLabs is more efficient, optimizing resources to put more processing power toward actual transactions — all while maintaining decentralization. Built for flexibility since not all transactions require the same speed, CasperLabs enables customization to serve a wide range of applications and markets.

CasperLabs is constructed with security mechanisms in place to punish bad actors, verifying and safeguarding every transaction and computation in ways today’s businesses expect at every scale, every time.

Great Developer Experience — Familiar tools, open architectures, and expert support to make any developer a blockchain developer. CasperLabs is written in Rust, allowing developers to write in any WebAssembly-compatible language and spend more time creating and less time configuring.

Open to the World — A public and permissionless software platform developed with radical transparency.

Guided by open source principles, CasperLabs is also a frictionless system that empowers anyone around the world to participate. As more people join, the platform grows stronger and more open. Innovations happen faster when created together.

CasperLabs builds trust through transparency and believes that when resources and information are decentralized, financial fairness and prosperity follow for the entire ecosystem.

Future-proof Foundation — An upgradeable infrastructure to support enduring and equitable innovation as businesses’ needs evolve over time. CasperLabs delivers longevity in a space filled with short-lived solutions. It keeps transaction fees predictable so developers and businesses never become victims of their own success.

About CasperLabs
CasperLabs is the blockchain platform purpose-built to scale sustainable opportunities for everyone, including developers, entrepreneurs, and consumers. Unlike other solutions and platforms, CasperLabs is designed to scale without sacrificing speed, cost, usability, decentralization or security. Led by CEO Mrinal Manohar, CTO (Chief Technology Officer) Medha Parlikar, and Lead CBC-Casper Architect Vlad Zamfir, the team seeks to scale opportunity for everyone by working with leading blockchain ecosystem participants.

The platform removes barriers that prevent mainstream blockchain adoption and is powered by the first implementation of Vlad Zamfir’s CBC Casper proof-of-stake protocol. With a global team that spans the U.K., Canada, the U.S. and beyond, CasperLabs is funded by Acuitas Group Holdings, Arrington XRP Capital, Consensus Capital, Axiom Holdings Group, Digital Strategies, MW Partners, and Hashkey Capital among others. For more information, visit https://casperlabs.io.

About Acuitas Group Holdings
Acuitas Group Holdings (AGH) is the personal holding company of Terren Peizer, dubbed the “Zelig of Wall Street,” that owns all of his portfolio company interests, which include four companies Mr. Peizer personally founded, and where Mr. Peizer remains the Chairman, CEO and majority shareholder. Mr. Peizer has been Founder or CEO of companies worth over $100 billion. AGH owns Acuitas Capital Group (ACG), which invests in public companies and provides growth capital to small and medium-sized enterprises. Since its inception in June 2009, ACG has provided companies with capital commitments and funding in excess of $1.5 Billion.